One of the great episodes of the TV show Seinfeld involved the main character, Jerry's, interactions with his dentist, who Jerry is later overheard badmouthing. This being Seinfeld, Jerry's comments quickly come back to bite him. The episode ends with a wedding-day confrontation between Jerry and the groom's father—a dentist, who calls Jerry an "anti-dentite bastard."
Well, count me as an "anti-dentite" when it comes to how the Republican North Carolina state legislature dealt with the most recent election in which Democrats won just about every major statewide office.
What does this possibly have to do with dentists? Well, a bill that started out as a six-page reform of dentistry laws in North Carolina turned into a 132-page bill aimed at reducing the authority of newly elected Democratic officials, including the governor and the attorney general.
Why, procedurally, a bill dealing with dentistry was used to try to flagrantly muscle away executive power from incoming democratically elected officials is irrelevant. What matters is that Republican lawmakers once again were trying to undermine the impact of legitimate election results.
First, even though North Carolina was one of the seven swing states that Donald Trump won—and by about three percentage points—the Democrats won the races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, superintendent of education, and secretary of state. Based on this, it's hard to argue that the Democrats had a serious problem with their core brand this election cycle, but rather it seems that Vice President Kamala Harris was not a strong-enough candidate.
While we did not end up seeing what President-elect Donald Trump had up his sleeve to undermine the results if he had lost the election, we are getting to see a new Republican playbook on how to deal with transfers of power if you don't happen to like the results.
Instead of fostering violence or corrupt attempts at compromising the certification of election results, the post-election antics of the Republican party in North Carolina were quite peaceful. Nothing at all like the Proud Boys stirring up a chaotic protest.
Moreover, this is not exactly a major a transition. The incumbent governor, Roy Cooper is a Democrat and the newly elected governor, Josh Stein, is also a Democrat who previously served as North Carolina's attorney general.
Nonetheless, the Republican legislature decided that the notion of a peaceful transfer of power could be best undermined by being peaceful but by also transferring less power. So, the Republican-controlled state House and Senate passed their 132-page bill chock full of limitations on what executive-branch officers can do going forward, stripping the statewide offices of power they previously held.
For instance, if passed, the bill would take away the governor's ability to appoint members of the state elections board and instead transfer those powers to the state auditor, a position held by a Republican. The bill would limit the attorney general's power to take a position in certain lawsuits that was contrary to any law that the state legislature had passed. The legislature took action to restrict the governor's authority to fill vacancies on state courts, including the Supreme Court. The legislation also removes certain powers of the state education superintendent to appeal key decisions on education matters.
The Republicans felt an urgent need to strip the executive branch of these powers—and many others—because they had lost their supermajority hold on the legislature, which allows them to override vetoes by the governor.
As expected, Cooper has vetoed the bill, and also as expected the state Senate has overridden the veto. There is a question as to whether all Republicans in the North Carolina House will vote to override, as well. They cannot afford to lose a single vote to succeed.
What makes this attempt to strip the executive branch of authority even more politically harrowing is that these limitations were all packaged together as part of a relief bill for the western part of the state, devastated by Hurricane Helene. The Republicans believed that would make it extremely difficult for the governor to veto the bill. He vetoed it anyway, which wasn't a particularly hard decision since Democrats believed the amount of relief offered was totally inadequate given what will be needed for true recovery.
We will have to see whether or not the Republicans are successful in overturning the governor's veto, but whatever the outcome we now have a key element of the Republican transfer of power playbook—be peaceful but transfer as little power as you possibly can. If you can keep control of critical governance areas, particularly running elections and the courts, it makes it much easier to win it all the next time.
Tom Rogers is executive chairman of Oorbit Gaming and Entertainment, an editor-at-large for Newsweek, the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. He also established MSNBC, is the former CEO of TiVo, a member of Keep Our Republic (an organization dedicated to preserving the nation's democracy). He is also a member of the American Bar Association Task Force on Democracy.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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